[kyrers]

> "The report also recommends that Congress consider any acquisition by the big tech companies to be anticompetitive unless the companies can prove that the merger would be in the public’s benefit and could not be otherwise achieved."

I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly?

What if the influence on public welfare is non existent or minimal, but both companies would benefit from the merger?

[DaiPlusPlus]

Look at your quote: it restricts it to "big tech" companies, and as nebulous as it sounds at-present I'd say it's quite easy to say which companies are "big".

[kyrers]

Yeah, I read it correctly but am just now realizing I wrote "tech companies" instead of "big tech companies", my bad.

So this is more a move to preven them from bullying smaller tech companies? I can see it from that angle, but it still seems to me that they want the power to block acquisitions.

For instance, would the following acquisition/merger be allowed: a big tech company acquiring a small company, which the owner wants to sell, that does not influence public welfare?

[diggan]

If a big company buys another one in order to close it down, not migrate its services with the sole goal of achieving market dominance (monopoly), then yes, the government should have the power to block that acquisition as the public would be worse off with one big company being the only provider of something, rather than N companies providing something. This is why we have free markets, as we want companies to compete with each other, not absorb each other.

[kyrers]

Yeah I understand that perspective, my question is what happens if the owner of said company wants to sell?

[DaiPlusPlus]

How many technology companies of note have a single owner (or even a single majority owner)? Every single one of those I can think of is a micro-ISV (or similar) and lacks a multi-million-person-sized user-base.

Those same types of companies also tend to not sell-out to a mega-corp that simply wants to shut it down - if they really need the money they could presumably sell it to a competitor that would actually capitalize on their investment.

In a more general sense, I would like to see moves towards laws and regulations prohibiting more detrimental-to-the-public business activity - we already ban loss-leaders in many circumstances, so it's not a stretch to ban (or rather: to retroactively punish) buying out the competition simply to shut it down.

What's interesting to me is that our industry has plenty of examples of big corporations buying competing companies and products - and keeping them running despite internal competition and even cannibalizations, such as Autodesk and Discrete (3ds vs. Maya), Adobe and Macromedia (GoLive, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, FreeHand), even Microsoft too (Microsoft Works vs. Microsoft Office).

[DaiPlusPlus]

> If a big company buys another one in order to close it down

Apple's business model right there.

[athms]

Such as? As far as I can tell they have all been technology acquisitions. Sure, Apple uses the technology for its own products, but that should be expected since they are not in the components or IP licensing business.

[DaiPlusPlus]

Sorry I was unclear.

I meant that lately Apple has been buying companies that offer services to both Android and iOS and then shutting-down their Android businesses, even when they're very profitable and/or popular.

* Dark Sky

* Texture

* NextVR

* Chomp

* Beddit

* Color Labs

* Emagic (Windows, not Android)

Granted, Apple does keep some Android services running, such as Shazam and Beats, but Apple's decision not just to suspend development of Android clients for services like Dark Sky and Texture, but to actively prohibit Android users while still allowing iOS access to the exact same backend web-service is just mean-spirited.

[ginko]

>but it still seems to me that they want the power to block acquisitions.

They don't want that power. They have it.